This disclosure generally relates to sharing information among devices, and particularly to the user interface of a content sharing client application.
Content management systems permit devices to synchronize content items with the content management system and other devices. A device stores a local copy of content items. The device executes a client application that interacts with the content management. When content items are added, deleted, and edited on a device, the client application sends the modification information are sent to the content management system for storage and synchronization with other devices. The client application needs to provide an interface by which users can readily share content items with other users.
Conventionally, client applications use menus, such as context-menu (or “right click” menu) that contains menu options related to content sharing. The problem with context-menus, however, is that a significant percentage of users are not aware of the context menu or how to use it. In other words, many users simply do not know how or when to invoke a context menu. Even if a user knows of the context menu, it will typically include a larger number of unrelated menu options from multiple different applications; context menus with over a twenty different menu items are common. The large number of items from multiple applications makes it difficult for a user to identify which menu options are relevant to content sharing.
The complexity of current context menu approaches has resulted in numerous specific problems. For example, one problem with conventional file system interfaces is that users have difficulty determining how to share content items shown in the file system interface as an email application attachment, since at the time they are viewing the content item and desire to send it, they are in the file system, not in their email program. Switching to the email program results in a loss of context: the user has to create a new email item and then use a file attachment function in the email program. This change of context from the file system interface to the email system interface is unintuitive and confusing for some users since it disrupts their expected workflow and focus of activities within the file system interface.
Another problem with context menus approaches is that users have difficulty sharing multiple files at once. Many users assume that the context menu is only applicable to a single selected item in the user interface. It is unclear to some users how the context menu operates when multiple items are selected.